Does Organic Food Cause Autism?

Of course not.  But if you applied the same logic used by many anti-GMO activists who claim that the increased use of GMOs caused the rise in autism, one would have to claim that the of organic food also caused autism.  That's according to this post by Kevin Folta.  

His little parody shows how easy it is to create a scary sounding food story based on spurious correlations.  In fact, he shows three graphs illustrating the rise in autism, the rise in diabetes, and the rise in organic food consumption over time.  All three track each other almost perfectly.  But no one reasonable would claim that diabetes causes autism or that organics cause autism.  Likewise, no reasonable person should claim GMOs cause autism unless they can provide some causal biological biases for the claim.  

It is exactly this sort of fallacious correlational analysis that "suggests" adoption of GMOs in India caused an increase in suicides.  This little tidbit spread like wildfire around the web, made its way into food documentaries, and now is often repeated as fact.  The trouble is that when you actually look at the facts, the story doesn't hold much water.  

Here are the first two paragraphs of Folta's parody:

While people think of "organic" cultivation techniques as natural and safe, there are important points we might consider.  Most of the plants used today have only been developed genetically in the last 100 years, and even "heirloom" varieties were bred relatively recently.  There have been no long term studies, and plants certainly are known to produce a wide suite of toxic compounds.  

Worse, organically cultivated plants are placed in highly artificial environments.  Rather than growing in soil as it exists, soils are highly amended with composts and manures. High levels of nitrogen and carbon dramatically alter gene expression leading to patterns never observed in nature. Van Djik et al. (2012) found that there were dramatic differences in gene expression between conventional and organically-grown potatoes, with organic potatoes showing higher expression of stress-related genes. There have been no long-term studies to assess the effects of this un-natural gene expression. 

Pesticide Facts

Over at his NYT blog, Mark Bittman weighs in on pesticide use in agriculture. It is really hard to know where to start to address the misnomers that are raised in his piece. Let me begin by saying, however, that no one (including myself) likes the thought of eating pesticides in food. But, we need to put things in perspective. Here are some UC Berkeley scientists:

We estimate that about 99.9% of the chemicals that humans ingest are naturally occurring. The amounts of synthetic pesticide residues in plant foods are low in comparison to the amount of natural pesticides produced by plants themselves.

Bittman begins by saying:

After the publication of “Silent Spring,” 50 years ago, we (scientists, environmental and health advocates, birdwatchers, citizens) managed to curb the use of pesticides[1] and our exposure to them — only to see their application grow and grow to the point where American agriculture uses more of them than ever before. And the threat is more acute than ever.

But if you click on the link he actually provides in the quote, you'll find front and center from the EPA that:

Total pounds of U.S. pesticide use decreased by approximately 8% from 1.2 to 1.1 billion pounds from 2000 to 2007.

Similarly, if you look at the USDA, you'll find that:

In 2007, roughly 877 million pounds of active ingredients were applied to U.S. cropland at a cost of roughly $7.9 billion. In comparison, in 1980, roughly 1.1 billion pounds of active ingredients were applied at a cost of roughly $7.1 billion (in inflation-adjusted dollars). During 1980-2007 the aggregate quantity of pesticides applied in the U.S. declined at an average rate of 0.6 percent per year

So, it appears the entire premise of the piece is off base. Still, I will briefly remark on some of the other claims raised in this piece:

• Even if pesticide use were increasing (which according to the above it is not), you have to keep in mind that not all pesticides are created equal. The pesticides farmers now use include much more glyphosate (think Round-Up) than they once did, which is less toxic and environmentally damaging than options they use to use (think atrazine).
• I agree integrated pest management (IPM) is a promising alternative and it is one that many farmers and food processors are already, voluntarily, pursuing because it can be profit enhancing. Pesticide resistance is a problem - always has been, always will be. Calling something a "superweed" makes it sound as if this is a new problem but it isn't. IPM can help mitigate resistance issues.
• The piece tries to link trends in pesticide use with autism and IQ. Has anyone heard of the Flynn effect? IQ is rising not falling.
• It is true that organics tend to (on average) use fewer total pesticides. But it is simply not true that organic farmers can't use pesticides. They can use "natural" pesticides like copper and sulfur, which are more toxic than many synthetics. There is really no way to tell when in the supermarket whether the organic has more or less pesticides than the non-organic.
• If you want to read a really nice account about pesticide risks in food, see Bjorn Lomborg's book. There you'll find lots of data and statistics showing that the relative risks of food pesticides are very small in the grand scheme of things. Moreover, he shows that the bigger cancer risk is not ingesting too many pesticides but rather not ingesting enough fruits and veggies.
• On an acre-per-acre basis, which commodities are the biggest users of pesticides? You might be surprised to find out that it is not corn, soybeans, or wheat but rather fruits and veggies like lemons, strawberries, etc. It is true that more pesticide is used in corn than strawberries but that's only because we grow a lot more corn than strawberries. If you look at pesticides per acres planted, a much different picture emerges.

Making NonSence of Food Labels

This piece in Time on food labels is frustrating.  In trying to help consumers “make sense” of food labels, they only confuse the situation – making several unsubstantiated claims and linking to dubious sources to support other claims. 

For example, here is what they say on the label hormone free:

There is a long list of health concerns tied to hormone-filled meat, from prenatal developmental problems to early puberty and infertility. Though the evidence isn’t always reliable, some studies have shown growth hormones from certain foods can disrupt human hormones and can even contribute to breast and prostate cancer.

If you click through to all three of the links they provide above, none actually shows what the piece purports they show.  The first link is to an advocacy website for “sustainability,” which in turn mainly references some European Union reports but not any actual studies published in peer-reviewed journals.  The second link is to a website about cancer, which discusses the correlation between meat eating and cancer, but says nothing about how added growth hormones used in meat production relates or does not relate to cancer.  The final link is to a scientific study that has nothing to do, as far as I can tell, with the use of subtherapeutic hormones given to cattle in feedlots.  Ironically, the scientific paper is about chicken meat, but broilers in the US are not given added growth hormones, so I’m not sure what the link has to do with what the authors are claiming.

Now, I’m not saying there are no problems with hormone use.  For example, there is evidence that growth hormones can lead to less tender beef.  But, generally these are concerns about eating quality not safety.

Another example is when the piece discusses pesticide use it says:

If a food product has  the USDA Organic certification, it’s usually pesticide-free, too.

That statement is absolutely false.  Organics can use a long list of “natural” pesticides, many of which are just as toxic as synthetic pesticides.         

Why is it so hard for Time to put out on objective piece on food labels?  It goes to show how much misinformation there is on food floating around that even when one wants to “set the record straight” they can’t find a good place to turn.

Organic Food Misperceptions

In my experience of doing numerous studies on consumer perceptions of organic foods, ​I've found a strong "halo effect."  That means the positive word "organic" acts as a halo and makes everything else about organic appear good even if it's not.  The result is that people often believe a lot of things about organic that aren't true.  

This piece by Christie Wilcox on the Scientific American blog ably dismantles two widely perceived myths about organic food: namely that organic foods don't use pesticides (they do) and that natural pesticides are less toxic than synthetic pesticides (they aren't).  

The Organic Food Subsidy Myth

Over at Reason.com, Balyen Linnekin offered a thoughtful response to the recent Stanford review showing little difference in the nutritional content of organic and non-organic food.  However, toward the end of the article Linnekin repeats a claim about organics that I’ve heard many times:

Finally, consider that organics critics like Cohen and Bailey attack the high cost of organic food while failing to mention that conventional food production—from soy and sugar to beef and dairy—is highly subsidized. Organic food production, on the other hand, is not.

First, for many, many food products including virtually all fruits and vegetables from tomatoes to spinach to oranges to apples, there are no regular government subsidy programs - organic or not.  Thus, government subsides cannot explain the high price of organic lettuce compared to non-organic lettuce. 

Here is a part of what I had to say about the issue in my forthcoming book, The Food Police (footnotes omitted):

We’re often told organics don’t get government subsidies, but that’s a fabrication.  In Europe, organic farmers are subsidized like all other farmers.  In the U.S., there are programs like the Environmental Quality Incentives Program that pay producers to transition from conventional to organic.  There are other programs that use federal monies to help organic farmers pay the cost of certification.  Organic farmers can receive government-subsidized crop insurance just like non-organic farmers.  Organic milk is subjected to many of the same complex price-support rules imposed by the government on non-organic milk. Hundreds of millions of tax dollars are spent on research and education into organics and on marketing and monitoring programs.  The food police tell us that the growth in organic food demand is the free market working at its best, while using the taxing power of the state to manipulate the market by subsidizing organic production, marketing, and research activities.  You can’t have your organic-is-libertarian cake and eat it too.